The Coming Race · Chapter
XVI explained
The narrator describes the Vril Staff in detail, its construction, powers, and the hereditary aptitude required to wield it.
What happens
The narrator describes the Vril Staff in detail, its construction, powers, and the hereditary aptitude required to wield it. He recounts a visit to the College of Sages' museum, where obsolete weapons and steam-powered models are displayed as relics of a savage past. Zee explains the philosophical basis of vril, arguing that matter is animated by the will of an intellectual agent. The narrator also examines ancient portraits, noting a shift from expressive, passionate faces to serene, uniform beauty after the vril revolution, and views three prehistorical portraits of a legendary philosopher with webbed digits and reptilian features.
Themes in this chapter
Technology and Power
The Vril Staff is depicted as a versatile tool of destruction, healing, and mind control, whose power is proportional to the user's hereditary vril properties, illustrating the theme of technology as an extension of innate power.
Evolution and Species Superiority
Zee's argument that the An began with the capacity for divine ideas, not as a tadpole, and the narrator's observation of the Vril-ya's serene, evolved faces, highlight themes of species superiority and directed evolution.
Critique of Democracy and American Politics
Aph-Lin dismisses the possibility of the Vril-ya relapsing into a 'Koom-Posh' (democratic chaos), reinforcing the critique of democratic systems as unstable and strife-ridden.
Characters to notice
- The Narrator
Describes the Vril Staff and his observations at the College of Sages; refrains from arguing with Zee due to her physical and intellectual superiority.
- Aph-Lin
Accompanies the narrator and Zee to the museum; speaks approvingly of Zee's philosophical discourse on the origin of the An.
- Zee
A magnificent Gy who explains the properties of vril and matter; argues that the An originated with the capacity to receive the idea of a Divine Being; displays formidable strength and learning.
Key passages
“It is hollow, and has in the handle several stops, keys, or springs by which its force can be altered, modified, or directed—so that by one process it destroys, by another it heals—by one it can rend the rock, by another disperse the vapour—by one it affects bodies, by another it can exercise a certain influence over minds.”
The Vril Staff is a hollow tube with controls that allow the user to switch between destructive, healing, rock-shattering, vapor-dispersing, physical, and mental-influence functions.
Describes the multifunctional nature of the Vril Staff.
“They assert that the full exercise of vril power can only be acquired by constitutional temperament— i.e. , by hereditarily transmitted organisation—and that a female infant of four years old belonging to the Vril-ya races can accomplish feats with the wand placed for the first time in her hand, which a life spent in its practice would not enable the strongest and most skilled mechanician, born out of the pale of the Vril-ya, to achieve.”
The Vril-ya believe that mastery of vril power depends on inherited biological traits, so even a four-year-old Vril-ya girl can outperform a lifetime practitioner from outside their race.
Highlights the hereditary and racial basis of vril proficiency.
“I had a secret persuasion that, whatever the real effects of vril upon matter, Mr. Faraday could have proved her a very shallow philosopher as to its extent or its causes, but I had no doubt that Zee could have brained all the Fellows of the Royal Society, one after the other, with a blow of her fist.”
The narrator privately thinks the scientist Michael Faraday could refute Zee's philosophy, but he dares not argue because Zee could physically overpower the entire Royal Society.
Shows the narrator's ironic deference to Zee's physical might over intellectual debate.